FREE SPEECH ZONE | Retrospective: Notes on six remarkable performances from the past year — including jazz, a DFL banquet, skydiving and a funeral

By Jeff Strate (Free Speech Zone) | January 11, 2013

The most useful and popular of our theater, music and film critics arguably see and reflect on too much stuff too frequently.  A reviewer’s fatigue-fogged lens and carpal tunnel syndrome can both mug a great play or canonize a pile of digital kitsch on an IMAX screen.  As a suburban cul-de-sac dweller, I don’t see much and am not vulnerable to these trap doors.  Because some of the few live performances I have seen are very notable but have slipped through cracks, I here provide, for your consideration dear possums, my 2012 list of memorable performances including a one act play, a DFL banquet, a funeral service, music ensembles and a video. ZEITGEIST / NIRMALA RAJASEKAR, 2/11/12, St. PaulThe new music ensemble, Zeitgeist, regularly teams up with other inventing and accomplished musicians in their Lower Town, Saint Paul performing space, Studio Z.  On the recommendation of my colleague and Zeitgeist Board Member Craig Sinard, my wife Carol and I attended a Zeitgeist concert-seminar of sorts in February featuring composer Nirmala Rajasekar.  Rajasekar is an internationally acclaimed virtuoso and teacher of a 7-string, plucked, South Indian, classical instrument called a Saraswati veena. We arrived a bit late, which in Minnesota – home of the crowded back pews – means that the tardy get the front row seats.  Such was the case that evening.  We quietly maneuvered into forward positions about seven feet from Ms. Rajasekar who was positioned cross-legged on the floor with the large, lute-like instrument.  A menagerie of instruments and Zeitgeistians Heather Barringer and Patti MCudd (percussion), Pat O’Keefe (woodwinds) and Shannon Wettstein (piano) fanned out behind her.The ensemble’s sound was at once exotic, tropical, familiar and fun.  The veena family of instruments, we learned, is counterpart to the sitar of Northern India, but evolved from a South India Carnatic tradition with distinct rhythms and human voice-like harmonics and tones.  The veena played by Ms. Rajasekar has a large, carved wood resonator – a large bowl set on the floor against her right thigh, that tapers into a hollow, 4-foot long neck.  The neck supports a 24-fret, fingering board and a smaller gourd-shaped resonator that rests on top of the left thigh.  An ornate, down-curving tuning box culminating in a dragon’s head, and a rank of 4 main strings and a rank of 3 “drone” strings stretched over their respective bridges complete the instrument. The Saraswati veena, we learned, is named after the Hindu goddess of knowledge, music, arts and science.  Hearing the waves of ethereal, pulsing, darting and swooping music above sustained harmonically rich chords produced by Ms. Rajasekar – and at one point her daughter Shruthi, e goddess must be very pleased.  A mere mortal like myself was mesmerized.  When jamming with improvising marimbas, drums, blocks, chimes, saxophone and piano the experience became illuminating, liberating and spiritual.  The experience was nourished by both east and west and was something new.  I rank my visit to the jewel box of Studio Z with the hour I spent absorbing, from only 15 paces, Leonard Bernstein rehearsing the New York Philharmonic one summer afternoon on the southwest flank of the Great Lawn in Central Park.Video: Nirmala Rejasekar ensemble on TPT’s Minnesota Original –                   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nziy-dBBJn0 LORIA PARKER, 4/26/12, New YorkMy good friend Peter Brownscomb and I had cabbed it from the East Village to 69th Street and Lexington Avenue to find a recital hall perched inside Hunter College, There we would find Loria Parker, another long time friend, who we hadn’t seen in years.  Loria had the title role in a one-act musical sponsored by the Ziegfeld Society, a non-profit group working to put fading Broadway traditions back on the boards. “America’s Funny Girl  – Fanny Brice,” crafted by Society President Mark York was premiering in the austere setting of the Lang Recital Hall that none-the-less was filling up with what appeared to be long-retired showgirls, cane-in-hand gents, Yiddish theater patrons, and friends of the cast.  The chatter of elderly, opinionated New Yorkers produced a wondrous, concerto of gab one cannot get in Minnesota – where I’ve spent the last two decades — not even on Seinfeld reruns.Back-story:  In the 1980’s Loria Parker and I had intersected in Manhattan’s cabaret circuit. At the time I was producing show bizzy, Phantom Agent segments for WNEW-TV’s PM Magazine.  I became friends with her father, the sly and vinegary effervescent, comedy writer, Coleman Jacoby (Bilko, Hope, Gleason) and her stepmother, Gaby Monet, an Oscar winning, documentary producer (HBO and Concepts Unlimited).I hadn’t heard Loria perform since a gig at Jan Wallman’s Cabaret about 1988.  That show featured one of her father’s songs and, on opening night, her presentation of a Hebrew National Salami to TV legend, Steve Allen – a recurring bit from his 1950’s run on The Tonight Show.  Steve and Coleman, both Friars Club elders, loved the tribute.  Loria’s strong, rounded alto, expressive personality, timing, and easy command of her dad’s bouncy lyrics and Sondheim’s tongue-twisting angst were remarkable.   This level of talent in 1978 had won Loria (as Catherine Jacoby) a singing role as Fanny Brice in the made-for-TV movie, “Ziegfeld:  The Man and His Women.”   It is my understanding that Loria and Barbra Streisand are the only actresses to portray Brice in major films.  Mark York heard of the film, located Loria, cast her in the title role and recruited her husband Gerry Janssen (a retired vocal coach) to operate the spotlight.  By long distance phone before the show, Loria confessed to me that she hadn’t been on stage in years; explaining that she had been building an image consulting firm, reviewing plays for the web publication TheaterScene.net and caring for family members.  The Canary, in other words, had the jitters.  But the personable flare that had won her bouquets in cabaret and regional theater were in full bloom at Hunter.  For sure, the audience came pre-loaded with affection; they were, after all, informed society members.  Fanny had been the Ziegfeld Follies’ biggest star.  Some, I figured, had heard Brice on the NBC Radio series “The Baby Snooks Show.”  Snooks – an impish, four-year old brat, who bested all grownups, had become Brice’s signature character in spite of decades of star turns on vaudeville and Broadway stages. Projecting the charismatic and comic flash of the seasoned trooper that Fanny Brice must have been in 1950, near the end of her still active life and the time frame of the play, Loria Parker delivered the full package.  She was ably supported by Jeffrey Scott Stevens and Jeff Dickamore in multiple roles including a butler, a stage manager, Eddie Cantor, Irving Berlin and Nick Arnstein – foils that served as brackets for Parker’s singing and York’s piano accompaniment for such Brice standards as “My Man,” “Second Hand Rose,” and “More Than You Know.”Although York builds his play on a fictional encounter between Brice and a college newspaper reporter – one with a gnat’s grasp of show biz history, he respects the factual record of the beloved comedienne’s life and garnishes the libretto with her actual words. For example, the reporter asks Fanny what it’s like to be an overnight success with the Baby Snooks character.  Parker, as Fanny, quips,”Listen kid, I’ve done everything in the theater except marry the property man.  I’ve been a soubrette in burlesque,  I’ve acted for Belasco and I’ve laid them out in the aisles at the Palace.  I’ve doubled as an alligator and I’ve worked for Ziegfeld and the Schubert,  and I’ve been joined in the holy bonds to Billy Rose. 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